I love my work bench. I can paint without crouching. Hooray. We also bought a few cabinets and drawers. I may need one more cabinet. For the time being, I am able to store most of my supplies in the same area of the house, rather than also in the kitchen, the bedroom, the closets...

I have not gotten used to it, and I constantly (constantly) go into the wrong room to get something before realizing that it was in the drawer right in front of me the whole time.

Colin put everything together himself, because he is wonderful and amazing and handsome and I love him. :oD

Meat was angry and spent most of the weekend under the bed, or scowling at us from the floor. He eventually began scowling at us from the couch cushion we kept, and then ultimately seemed to forget that we ever had a couch. Joey is thrilled that we finally realized that fetch is the most important thing, and have rearranged the apartment to accommodate this fact. He even helped us out by scattering his toys all over the newly created space.

As for Colin and I, we have taken up doing martial arts, yoga stretches, and spinning around in circles just because we can. I'm this close to doing a cartwheel in the middle of the room.

So, I've made a decision. It's finally time for me to accept that I'm an artist and that I work from home and that I need more room to do these things.

You see, I need a studio.

The main objective is to turn the most used space in my apartment into a designated working area. It's not just me, Colin needs more working space too. This place is really too small to use it the way we are. We're going to get rid of the couch. We don't sit on it anyway. (That, and all of us monkeys in the last apartment utterly destroyed it. You know who you are.) The rest of the planning and reorganizing is a blur to me at the moment, but I can't wait to start using the beautiful, unfinished-wood work bench I bought a few months ago. It's been in the garage this whole time. We're also going to buy some sort of new cabinet thingie. Yay!

Where we will sit on the rare occurrences that we actually want to sit in front of the TV will have to be decided on later. It's only going to be a problem when LOST is on anyway. Meat will be furious, but I think we're going to spare him a cushion.

The ironic thing is, when I was little and thought I would be an actress when I grew up, I had a secret dream of living in a cool artist's studio. Hmm...

Also, check out my Showcase on Trunkt, which was put on the front page for today! :o) I'm going through a weird Butter phase. It's an amazing color.

I have a designated Enso sketchbook next to my painting "station" and I try to do a few Zen Circles every now and then out of the paint I am mixing.

Circles themselves are very simple, though in this simplicity exists great truth and meaning. My "flavor" of Zen Circles is a little bit different than what I've traditionally seen, but the concept is the same. The idea being, a circle is painted with one stroke, in one fluid motion. If you've ever attempted to draw a circle freehand, it's fairly challenging. The act of trying is quite therapeutic for me. Zen Buddhists consider this a type of meditation, as it requires a clear mind and full concentration. Some artists hold that a Zen Circle is the graphical depiction of enlightenment itself.

Every circle is unique, and can be seen as a type of fingerprint of the artist that created it. It is not to be closely examined or analyzed, but rather viewed passively and without thinking. Only a child-like heart can truly appreciate the profound meaning that exists within a simple circle.

Sometimes when I reach the end of a painting, I am inspired to add just a little bit more here or there for some extra "kick." Like doing so will just improve it. It's finished, right? This is often a mistake. There's a fine line between a finished painting and a mushy blob of acrylic splat. A "finished" painting can suddenly become an ER canvas patient on the verge of being painted white and put on the shelf for later.

I'm working on finishing up some big ones. It's been too long. I have very little space in here. I also have really strong emotional attachments to one, so I'm just staring at it instead of finishing it.

Instead, today I decided to send off my first contest submission of the year, only to discover that my slides were not where I had intentionally put them, and had in fact, mysteriously vanished into thin air. As in, poof. Gone. I came to this realization after removing every drawer from the dresser, as well as the entire contents of every drawer, which I distributed all over the bed. I further checked the clothes drawers, the bathroom drawers, the kitchen drawers, Colin's closet, and uncovered every single surface in the house, including between the couch cushions, just in case one of the animals was playing some sort of mind game with me.

Nothing.

Although, I have not checked the water heater closet on the patio.

Meanwhile, in my downward spiral of panic and despair, I accidentally kicked over the 4 foot long blacklight fixture that was leaning against the wall next to my in-process paintings. So, instead of continuing to wallow and fret over my slides, I had to clean up the millions of tiny pieces of black glass that had exploded all over the entire front half of my apartment. This resulted in further confusion and upset from the animals, since I had to ban them from the affected area in addition to bringing out the terrifying horror that is the Vacuum Monster.

Getting them to fess up now is unlikely.

Instead, I'll be paying 20 bucks for overnight shipping in order to get new slides in time to mail off my submission before the January 15th postmark deadline.

I might want to throw a few organizational skills into my 2008 goals and plans.

I admit that I go a little overboard with packaging sometimes, but I do it because it makes me happy. A friend of mine does packaging with only recycled materials (boxes, paper bags, etc) out of respect for the environment. I love this philosophy, and I actually feel slightly guilty about how much bubble wrap I use because of it. But I swear, I can't help it. It brings me joy to wrap my paintings up like a gift. There's something romantic to me about fine art wrapped in fabric and tied up with hemp. I love to use fabric, and although I assume my collectors likely just toss it out, I use a long piece to wrap it up in, just so they can have the experience of unwrapping it. I think it really adds to the moment of seeing the painting for the first time when surrounded by a beautiful fabric, like the one I used to mail the painting above. (Which I purchased many yards of, just because I was so in love with it.) I also use a really long piece of hemp to tie it with, partially because it looks neat, but also because sometimes there are legitimate uses for things like a long piece of super-sturdy hemp!